Several types of vaccines are used for the prevention of infectious diseases such as certain tumours, including attenuated microorganisms, recombinant proteins and DNA vaccines. The cell-mediated arm of the immune system is the main arm involved in providing the host with the ability to defend, recover from viral infections and to prevent further infections by the same virus. This type of immune response is also crucial in protecting the host against the onset, development and spread of tumour.
Recently, research has been carried out on the development of vaccine immunotherapy for cancer patients in order to improve the treatment modalities. This form of immunotherapy involves the use of dendritic cells, which are shown to be potent antigen presenting cells. These cells possess unique properties that allow them to elicit primary and boost secondary immune responses as well as regulate the type of T-cell mediated immune response that is induced. In recent years, several studies have demonstrated that tumour antigen-pulsed dendritic cells are capable of inducing both the generation and proliferation of T-helper and cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) cells via antigen presentation by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and class II molecules respectively to mediate tumour immunity.